[33] Guardian, 21st May 1879.

It is not wonderful that people should be impressed by the vicissitudes and surprises and dramatic completeness of Cardinal Newman's career. It is not wonderful that he should be impressed by this himself. That he who left us in despair and indignation in 1845 should have passed through a course of things which has made him, Roman Catholic as he is, a man of whom Englishmen are so proud in 1879, is even more extraordinary than that the former Fellow of Oriel should now be surrounded with the pomp and state of a Cardinal. There is only one other career in our time which, with the greatest possible contrasts in other points, suggests in its strangeness and antecedent improbabilities something of a parallel. It is the train of events which has made "Disraeli the Younger" the most powerful Minister whom England has seen in recent years. But Lord Beaconsfield has aimed at what he has attained to, and has fought his way to it through the chances and struggles of a stirring public life. Cardinal Newman's life has been from first to last the life of the student and recluse. He has lived in the shade. He has sought nothing for himself. He has shrunk from the thought of advancement. The steps to the high places of the world have not offered themselves to him, and he has been content to be let alone. Early in his course his rare gifts of mind, his force of character, his power over hearts and sympathies, made him for a while a prominent person. Then came a series of events which seemed to throw him out of harmony with the great mass of his countrymen. He appeared to be, if not forgotten, yet not thought of, except by a small number of friends—old friends who had known him too well and too closely ever to forget, and new friends gathered round him by the later circumstances of his life and work. People spoke of him as a man who had made a great mistake and failed; who had thrown up influence and usefulness here, and had not found it there; too subtle, too imaginative for England, too independent for Rome. He seemed to have so sunk out of interest and account that off-hand critics, in the easy gaiety of their heart, might take liberties with his name.

Then came the first surprise. The Apologia was read with the keenest interest by those who most differed from the writer's practical conclusions; twenty years had elapsed since he had taken the unpopular step which seemed to condemn him to obscurity; and now he emerged from it, challenging not in vain the sympathy of his countrymen. They awoke, it may be said—at least the younger generation of them—to what he really was; the old jars and bitternesses had passed out of remembrance; they only felt that they had one among them who could write—for few of them ever heard his wonderful voice—in a way which made English hearts respond quickly and warmly. And the strange thing was that the professed, the persistent denouncer of Liberalism, was welcomed back to his rightful place among Englishmen by none more warmly than by many Liberals. Still, though his name was growing more familiar year by year, the world did not see much more of him. The head of a religious company, of an educational institution at Birmingham, he lived in unpretending and quiet simplicity, occupied with the daily business of his house, with his books, with his correspondence, with finishing off his many literary and theological undertakings. Except in some chance reference in a book or newspaper which implied how considerable a person the world thought him, he was not heard of. People asked about him, but there was nothing to tell. Then at last, neglected by Pius IX., he was remembered by Leo XIII. The Pope offered him the Cardinalship, he said, because he thought it would be "grateful to the Catholics of England, and to England itself." And he was not mistaken. Probably there is not a single thing that the Pope could do which would be so heartily welcomed.

After breaking with England and all things English in wrath and sorrow, nearly thirty-five years ago, after a long life of modest retirement, unmarked by any public honours, at length before he dies Dr. Newman is recognised by Protestant England as one of its greatest men. It watches with interest his journey to Rome, his proceedings at Rome. In a crowd of new Cardinals—men of eminence in their own communion—he is the only one about whom Englishmen know or care anything. His words, when he speaks, pass verbatim along the telegraph wires, like the words of the men who sway the world. We read of the quiet Oxford scholar's arms emblazoned on vestment and furniture as those of a Prince of the Church, and of his motto—Cor ad cor loquitur. In that motto is the secret of all that he is to his countrymen. For that skill of which he is such a master, in the use of his and their "sweet mother tongue," is something much more than literary accomplishment and power. It means that he has the key to what is deepest in their nature and most characteristic in them of feeling and conviction—to what is deeper than opinions and theories and party divisions; to what in their most solemn moments they most value and most believe in.

His profound sympathy with the religiousness which still, with all the variations and all the immense shortcomings of English religion, marks England above all cultivated Christian nations, is really the bond between him and his countrymen, who yet for the most part think so differently from him, both about the speculative grounds and many of the practical details of religion. But it was natural for him, on an occasion like this, reviewing the past and connecting it with the present, to dwell on these differences. He repeated once more, and made it the keynote of his address, his old protest against "Liberalism in religion," the "doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but one creed is as good as another." He lamented the decay of the power of authority, the disappearance of religion from the sphere of political influence, from education, from legislation. He deplored the increasing impossibility of getting men to work together on a common religious basis. He pointed out the increasing seriousness and earnestness of the attempts to "supersede, to block out religion," by an imposing and high morality, claiming to dispense with it.

He dwelt on the mischief and dangers; he expressed, as any Christian would, his fearlessness and faith in spite of them; but do we gather, even from such a speaker, and on such an occasion, anything of the remedy? The principle of authority is shaken, he tells us; what can he suggest to restore it? He under-estimates, probably, the part which authority plays, implicitly yet very really, in English popular religion, much more in English Church religion; and authority, even in Rome, is not everything, and does not reach to every subject. But authority in our days can be nothing without real confidence in it; and where confidence in authority has been lost, it is idle to attempt to restore it by telling men that authority is a good and necessary thing. It must be won back, not simply claimed. It must be regained, when forfeited, by the means by which it was originally gained. And the strange phenomenon was obviously present to his clear and candid mind, though he treated it as one which is disappearing, and must at length pass away, that precisely here in England, where the only religious authority he recognises has been thrown off, the hold of religion on public interest is most effective and most obstinately tenacious.

What is the history of this? What is the explanation of it? Why is it that where "authority," as he understands it, has been longest paramount and undisputed, the public place and public force of religion have most disappeared; and that a "dozen men taken at random in the streets" of London find it easier, with all their various sects, to work together on a religious basis than a dozen men taken at random from the streets of Catholic Paris or Rome? Indeed, the public feeling towards himself, expressed in so many ways in the last few weeks, might suggest a question not undeserving of his thoughts. The mass of Englishmen are notoriously anti-Popish and anti-Roman. Their antipathies on this subject are profound, and not always reasonable. They certainly do not here halt between two opinions, or think that one creed is as good as another. What is it which has made so many of them, still retaining all their intense dislike to the system which Cardinal Newman has accepted, yet welcome so heartily his honours in it, notwithstanding that he has passed from England to Rome, and that he owes so much of what he is to England? Is it that they think it does not matter what a man believes, and whether a man turns Papist? Or is it not that, in spite of all that would repel and estrange, in spite of the oppositions of argument and the inconsistencies of speculation, they can afford to recognise in him, as in a high example, what they most sincerely believe in and most deeply prize, and can pay him the tribute of their gratitude and honour, even when unconvinced by his controversial reasonings, and unsatisfied by the theories which he has proposed to explain the perplexing and refractory anomalies of Church history? Is it not that with history, inexorable and unalterable behind them, condemning and justifying, supporting and warning all sides in turn, thoughtful men feel how much easier it is to point out and deplore our disasters than to see a way now to set them right? Is it not also that there are in the Christian Church bonds of affinity, subtler, more real and more prevailing than even the fatal legacies of the great schisms? Is it not that the sympathies which unite the author of the Parochial Sermons and the interpreter of St. Athanasius with the disciples of Andrewes, and Ken, and Bull, of Butler and Wilson, are as strong and natural as the barriers which outwardly keep them asunder are to human eyes hopelessly insurmountable?